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The Nissan Leaf takes on an uphill road in mountains east of Seattle. Ups and downs can affect the car's estimated range.
"Your mileage may vary" ... That old phrase is even more relevant for the newfangled Nissan Leaf electric vehicle, which has an advertised range of 100 miles on a charge. In fact, the mileage depends quite a bit on your driving style, and the numbers can go up and down in the course of a drive. Yes, it's possible to get 100 miles or more from the Leaf. But if you're the kind of guy who keeps the car on the road even if the needle is near the "E" mark, you might have to change your ways.
The "needle" on the Leaf isn't a physical needle, but a readout that appears right in front of the driver on the dashboard, as well as on the energy-monitoring displays you can bring up on the center console's touchscreen. You can even bring up a map with two concentric circles, estimating how far you can go in normal mode (in which the Leaf acts pretty much like a normal car) and in eco-mode (which tweaks the car's response to optimize the power savings).
To arrive at those estimates, the Leaf's electronic brain factors in how you've been driving the car up to that point, as well as the load that's being put on the electric motor at that moment. When you're coasting downhill, you can actually add to your range.
Luxury in a Leaf
Let's take today's drive as an example. The first seven miles were so effortless that the range went up from 96 to 103 miles in eco-mode. But that was the day's high mark: As multimedia editor Jim Seida and I drove up through Western Washington's Issaquah Alps, the numbers were driven down. At the 19-mile mark, when we passed by Snoqualmie Falls (where the TV show "Twin Peaks" was filmed), the Leaf's screens told us we had only 45 miles of driving left.
Those numbers quickly crept up again during our descent from the mountains -- back to a range of 60 miles. But we lived a little too luxuriously on the way back: Turning on the heater and the fan ate into our electrical reserve, and by the time we returned to Redmond, we had an estimated 24 miles left in the batteries. A 47-mile trip took away 72 miles of my original estimated range. Good thing we didn't go all the way to Snoqualmie Pass (which would have been a 100-mile round trip).
If we were true hypermilers, we would have been able to get by with less electricity -- but instead, we drove the Leaf like a normal car. The bottom line is that Leaf drivers will have to think about their driving strategy: If a visit to the neighborhood grocery store is your only stop of the day, there's nothing to worry about. If you have a 25-mile commute to work, and you have to stop back at home before going out to an evening engagement that's 5 miles away, you just might be thinking about charging up while you're at work and using the eco-mode setting.
Guilty as charged?
Speaking of charged up, I received some sharp comments about the fact that I topped off the Leaf's batteries on Monday by plugging into an outlet at the office parking garage. "The main problem is you are stealing someone else's electricity," one commenter wrote. Another writer was critical of the whole electric-vehicle concept: "When that big 4x4 is blocking you in, it will be me. The hand waving you forward will have an extended middle finger. Just for you EV elites."
Such responses show that the move toward "electrification" of the automotive industry could run into a few culture clashes along the way. What principles will find their way into electric-car etiquette, or corporate and governmental policies?
I'd like to think that places like the Oregon city of Hillsboro (where Intel is the largest employer) are leading the way in the creation of charging-station havens. I'd like to think that the EV Project, which is due to install 15,000 charging stations over the next year with $115 million in support from the U.S. Department of Energy, is on the right track. But for some people, having taxpayers foot the bill for the installation of charging stations would be going too far.
The way I see it, the success of the Leaf will depend on the spread of those charging stations -- not so much because they're necessary, but because that will reassure folks like me that there's a backup plan just in case the Leaf sometimes doesn't go as far as you expect it to. I may find out about that firsthand tonight, when I take my loaner Leaf on a final 19-mile drive to turn it in. Stay tuned for the next chapter. ...
Click here for the next chapter: 'I Was Nagged by My Electric Car'
You can try the Leaf out for yourself during the "Drive Electric Tour," sponsored by Nissan. The next stop is in San Francisco. Keep checking our Green Innovation section for more about electric cars and our "Electric Road Trip."
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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I live in the Montreal region in Canada where winters cans be cold. I suspect that the range of a leaf will be quite a bit shorter (maybe half?) in winter if i decide that I don't want to freeze while I'm driving!
Sounds about right--but check and see if there is some sort of battery temperature regulation--maybe it would be a matter of drawing twice as much juice to charge while still keeping the batteries warm--once underway the batteries probably give off enough heat to keep themselves warm but your range probably still less. For sure is going to cost more to run it than in a warm climate but maybe not as bad as you think. Check it out.
I live in Arizona , and we have 300+ days of sunshine a year. If electric solar panels were installed on the roof & hood of the car, how much would that increase the range of the car? Not only would it give extra juice to the engine while driving, but seeing how most people will be driving them to work, it would allow 7+ hours of solar recharging during your workday.... Any thought being put into doing this?
That area of solar panel would not be enough juice to run anything but a fan.
These batteries are just so bad for the environment, with their toxic materials, and reliance on 40 or more pounds of precious rare earth materials. It's a bona fide human rights disaster the way China is mining them, just a step or two away from blood diamonds. The economy of recycling all the nasty materials is unrealistic... a lot of these materials wills imply be thrown away and cause a lot of damage.
Just buy a very efficient diesel. Hell, a gasoline car this size can be very fuel efficient.
When I see these cars, I will think of them as the most obnoxious. We've all seen people use their cars in a pathetic attempt to make a statement about how awesome they are. In this case, the statement comes at the cost of many dead Chinese miners, and an environmental pollution that ordinary cars today don't even approach.
And also, they are the sign of ignorance, as the drivers are posing as conscious of these issues while actually being hypocrites.
It's a free country. If you want to drive the little poison slave car, just be aware that you look like a real creep. Don't be surprised if you come back to it unplugged in those garages. I wouldn't do that... but someone will.
Who's ignorant? Lithium batteries are not toxic.
Unless the feds are going to subsidize my gasoline purchases I have serious issues with the feds subsidizing charging stations for electric vehicle drivers. Of course to each his own and I served the country for 24 years to ensure that we can have differences of oponion.
Mr. Boyle:
Playing "electricity vampire" by sneaking around your employer's parking garage with your electric cord is no different than if you were sneaking around with a garden hose, siphoning gasoline from strangers' cars, except you're violating your employer's trust by stealing its property instead of the property of total strangers.
Nissan estimates that, based on average national electricity prices of $0.11/kWh, it will typically cost $2.75 for a full empty-to-full charge of the Leaf. With all the hydro-generated electricity you have in WA, your employer may pay a lower rate for electricity used at its parking garage, and you presumably didn't need a full charge. And all that's fine -- it's just pointing out that this is a petty theft, on the same economic magnitude as, say, shoplifting a candy bar. Is that supposed to make it okay?
You're embarked on a useful and informative set of review articles about a vehicle in which people are keenly interested. I applaud you for acknowledging the criticism from your last piece, but you're doing yourself and your readers a disservice by trying to soft-pedal this issue as only being one of "etiquette." If a Leaf is only practical if its owner engages in acts of petty theft to fuel it, that's at least as important an issue for you to write about -- EVERY aspect of that, including at least the legal, ethical, economical & practical -- as your reaction to, say, the dashboard gauges. Indeed, much of the rest of your writing, quite commendably and usefully, is already focused on the bare "availability of recharge" issue, so you've clearly (and correctly) flagged this general subject as one of the most important ones for prospective Leaf buyers.
I'd have been interested to find out, for example, what your corporate employer would say if you'd found (or created) the right corporate channel through which to ask, "Hey, is it okay if I use up to a couple of bucks of the company's electricity to recharge my electric car?" Of course, msnbc is hardly a typical employer -- and it has an interest in your story, of course, if it chooses to consider that -- but I'd really be curious about the corporate response you'd get. Would they say, "Sure, have at it -- if you can manage to find that prime parking spot by the outlet open"? Or would they say, "We can't let you do this unless we make a similar opportunity available to others, so nobody can"? Or "We're installing 220V recharging stations so lots can"?
My point isn't so much that you're a thief -- again, it's chump change, and given that it was from your employer you almost certainly could go get retroactive forgiveness even if you didn't seek permission prospectively -- but that you've got a blind spot in your failure to come to grips with the fact that, yes, it's theft when someone plugs in his electric car to someone else's electric plug without permission. I make this remark not to condemn you, but to alert you, and hopefully to encourage you. Wouldn't your report on your road testing be more complete and more interesting if you didn't just sneak around, but actually found out how many potential but unconventional sources of electric current would be willing to give, or sell, you some juice?
At the university near here there is a new single story parking structure, the type mostly meant for shade, which was built with solar panels on it's roof. If you have an electric vehicle you can park it in the shade, keeping it a bit cooler in the hot summers, and get a free charge besides, without "pilfering" any electricity at all from the campus.